If it be so, I hold the safer side,
For none of them my error shall deride. 
And if hereafter no rewards appear, 947
Yet virtue hath itself rewarded here. 
If those who this opinion have despised,
And their whole life to pleasure sacrificed,
Should feel their error, they, when undeceived,
Too late will wish that me they had believed. 
If souls no immortality obtain,
’Tis fit our bodies should be out of pain. 
The same uneasiness which everything
Gives to our nature, life must also bring. 
Good acts, if long, seem tedious; so is age,
Acting too long upon this earth her stage.—­
Thus much for age, to which when you arrive,
That joy to you, which it gives me, ’twill give. 960

END OF DENHAM’S POETICAL WORKS.